It’s the start of the second week of Writing 201: Poetry! So far Day 6 has been my favorite..why? Because I got to use books! Ben suggested any type of medium for our found poetry type poems and when I saw book spine poetry, I immediately fell in love. It was SO much fun playing with my books, arranging and rearranging to come up with something I related to.

I also tried to fit in the Chiasmus but in the sense of reading it one way and getting one view on it, and then reading it the opposite way and getting a reversed view on it. If it’s not the proper way that is used then it’s my mistake but I’m happy with how this turned out. Anyway, here’s my book spine poem!

First read it Left to Right ; then Right to Left.

If it was confusing to understand (and I’m sorry if it was that’s my fault) I hope this short explanation will clear things up.

The subject of this poem is myself and my “face”. The face that I put out there for everyone to see, everyone to see me as a perfect girl who has no problems and someone who is perfectly content with her life. It couldn’t be farther from the truth but we shall press on. The “wicked, all-american girl” part of me is the part that doesn’t speak. Everything of me is hidden from the world. That part of me is the “demon in my view” which makes me shatter the mirror to get rid of her. I only have one option to change the way I feel about this lie, I have to change. A metamorphosis is needed, the dark remedy that will fix how I see myself. I am born again, reincarnated, so my true self can finally speak.

When read reversed, I see it as a descent back into the lies and madness of false perfection.

Doesn’t that capture the more foreboding parts of who we are? It was a delight, however sardonic, to be given the left-to-right then right-to-left direction. Reading from the right, as you write about, is mad. But how often does a descent into madness get told in so succinct and striking a way? Thank you!